Abstract
The meagre (Argyrosomus regius) is a carnivorous fish which requires diets with higher protein content, causing an increment in diets cost. A way to diminish this cost is to use vegetable meals like soybean meal (SB). So the aim of this trial was to determine the optimum inclusion level of defatted soybean meal in experimental diets for this species. 800 fishes (165 g) were distributed in 8 tanks, two replicates per treatment. Four isoproteic (50% CP) and isolipidic (17% Cl) diets were formulated with four levels of soybean meal inclusion, 0, 15, 30 and 45%. The trial lasted 107 days. Meagre fed diets 15 and 30% obtained the highest final weight. There were no significant differences among treatments in the feed conversion rate (FCR) and the protein efficiency (PER). According to the quadratic regression, the optimum SB inclusion to maximize thermal growth coefficient (TGC) was 26.4% and for FCR was 27.6%. No significant differences were observed in energy, protein and amino acid retention among diets. The inclusion of SB in meagre diets can generate a decrease in the use of fish meal and in turn reduce the cost of producing meagre Mediterranean aquaculture industry. Key words: Argyrosomus regius, fish meal replacement, defatted soybean meal, economic analysis.
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